# what foreign languages do you speak?



## Herbe (May 14, 2020)

just curious! i'm one of the run of the mill americans that's only fluent in english, although I plan on majoring in french and studying abroad to gain fluency! I've studied it for 3 years. my minor will be in linguistics, and i hope to study many more languages in college and beyond (like mandarin, japanese, maybe arabic)

what languages have you studied/are fluent in? i know there's a lot of different languages that tcod ppl can speak :>


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## rari_teh (May 14, 2020)

I'm fluent in Portuguese because, well, it's my native language. I can also speak Spanish (though "fluent" would be too strong of a word) and I know enough German to be able to communicate myself in the language

I'd love to learn Mandarin one day, but I doubt I'll ever go past 'nihao'


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## IndigoClaudia (May 14, 2020)

I'm a fluent english speaker, english is my native language. I'm also studying french so i can understand/speak like 40% of the french language. I know enough to get a point across. I grew up listening to lullabies in portuguese because i couldn't fall asleep without music as a little kid, so my mom bought me a CD with portuguese lullabies and after reading all the translations to the songs i started to understand one or two things, so i can understand a tiny bit of portuguese. I also took spanish but i don't really remember. 

Mostly though, french is the important thing, because when i grow up i plan to move to canada because canada is awesome.


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## Herbe (May 14, 2020)

canada is a really solid choice!


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## IndigoClaudia (May 14, 2020)

Then we have my runners up :P



Spoiler: Runners Up




Sweden
The UK
Japan.


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## M&F (May 14, 2020)

rari_teh said:


> I'm fluent in Portuguese because, well, it's my native language. I can also speak Spanish (though "fluent" would be too strong of a word) and I know enough German to be able to communicate myself in the language
> 
> I'd love to learn Mandarin one day, but I doubt I'll ever go past 'nihao'


motherfucker how do we also basically have the same set of languages-

so yeah, portuguese is also my mother tongue; you can normally see my flawless, flouelez english at a given time; I've learned spanish, not to the point of fluency, but at the very least to the point that I could bob and weave for two non-spanish-speaking imbeciles in Buenos Aires; and I've started learning german a few years back, altho I still have a lot to learn there

I've been thinking about doing Japanese next, too, but ah, one language at a time,


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## mewtini (May 14, 2020)

english natively and spanish insofar as high school/college courses + visiting a couple of hispanophone countries (due to the nature of The Educational System, i can write/understand spanish at an intermediate level, but i have to think really hard when i try to actually speak it)

took some french in middle school and retained some vocab and not much else. i can count really high in mandarin but i don't really know much else, which is sad, seeing as how it's semi-integral to my cultural identity,


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## Mawile (May 14, 2020)

I know English natively and a minor amount of ASL from high school classes! I don't know enough ASL to be able to hold a conversation, but doing some signs along with songs is good hand feels

I also wouldn't mind learning Japanese eventually so I can finally play touhou/other Japanese games without needing to run a translation patch


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## Keldeo (May 14, 2020)

In addition to English, I know basic Japanese and really basic Mandarin. 

I'd definitely like to learn more - I think my answer is basically the same as the last time a thread like this came up. ^^"


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## Kung Fu Ferret (May 14, 2020)

English is my primary language, although I do know  basic Spanish, some Swahili, and bits and pieces of Japanese.


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## kyeugh (May 15, 2020)

i think my german was pretty much conversational not so long ago, but it is atrophying at an astonishing rate. i can usually remember a word if i really think though!


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## Eifie (May 15, 2020)

they call me the Keldeo whisperer


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## Zori (May 15, 2020)

I speak English natively and can speak some broken Latin (I don't have very many people to talk to :P). I can read Latin a lot better, but still not to the point of fluency. I've studied Ancient Greek, but only ever reading it, and not speaking it, so I'm probably really bad.
I studied some basic Mandarin in 8th grade and I know how to say "How are you" and "You SoB" in Japanese, so :P


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## IndigoClaudia (May 15, 2020)

I forgot to mention i've been studying japanese on and off. I know how to say a few colors, how to say cat, and how to say bird.


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## ColorBlind (Jul 21, 2020)

I speak Spanish fluently. I started learning it when I was twelve and kept up with it ever since then. I actually download/install software in Spanish now. My iPhone is also in Spanish. I love watching Spanish soap operas and learning about the whole culture across the various regions. My biggest test was my first ever mission trip to El Salvador as a study abroad thing when I was in college (2015). My language skills grew phenomenally and I got the confidence I needed to feel more comfortable utilizing all the stuff I learned.

I would like to learn a third language but I can't decide which one. My sister taught herself Korean, so that's an option. But I also teeter-totter with Japanese or Italian. I dunno.


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## qenya (Jul 22, 2020)

oo, guess I missed this thread when it was originally made!

Unfortunately I'm not strong in any language other than English, but I'm learning German in the hope of being able to move there for work after I graduate. Wherever possible I try to play video games or watch TV in German, for the immersion. (Unfortunately German translations of things are often... not great.) Before the pandemic I went to a conversation practice group too, but, well. Hope my speaking hasn't atrophied too much.

I also picked up a bit of Spanish (castilian) and Catalan while doing fieldwork overseas last summer, but barely enough to communicate basic concepts. And I can pronounce Japanese kana, but fuck if I know what any of the words mean.


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## Hydreigon25 (Jul 22, 2020)

Keldeo said:


> In addition to English, I know basic Japanese and really basic Mandarin.
> 
> I'd definitely like to learn more - I think my answer is basically the same as the last time a thread like this came up. ^^"


お元気ですか


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## Ys_ (Jul 22, 2020)

My native language is Spanish and the second one is English. I went to a bilingual school, so I learned English early. I took some French courses but only got to finishing the basic levels. And I would want to also learn Korean and Japanese.


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## Hydreigon25 (Jul 22, 2020)

i speak English & , i know Japanese as my second language


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## Zori (Jul 22, 2020)

Hydreigon25 said:


> Keldeo said:
> 
> 
> > In addition to English, I know basic Japanese and really basic Mandarin.
> ...


元気です
This is the full extent of my japanese other than
[watashi no sakana wa shinimashita]


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## storm (Jul 22, 2020)

english is my native language but my family is polish, so I can understand it almost perfectly - except for slang, dialect, curse words, the sort of things I don't encounter often in my own house, ha - and read it, albeit very slowly. speaking it is... a crapshoot, I get flustered and I know what to say but my memory and ability to get all the sounds in the right order fly out the window, especially when interacting with my grandmother, who only speaks polish and is. not an easy person to be around

I know a bit of japanese from some courses, though I can only read and write hiragana, and I also have a deep-rooted knowledge of french from canadian bilingualism + extended french classes, but my extended french school was very much the worst and I deliberately let my skills erode out of resentment for the next decade. whoops!


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## Hydreigon25 (Jul 22, 2020)

今日はいい日です


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## Zori (Jul 22, 2020)

Hydreigon25 said:


> 今日はいい日です


Today is an ii day?
me just piecing it together with my equally bad mandarin


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## Hydreigon25 (Jul 22, 2020)

@Seshas 

今日はいい日です is Japanese for Today is a good day.


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## kyeugh (Jul 22, 2020)

kokorico said:


> Unfortunately I'm not strong in any language other than English, but I'm learning German in the hope of being able to move there for work after I graduate. Wherever possible I try to play video games or watch TV in German, for the immersion. (Unfortunately German translations of things are often... not great.) Before the pandemic I went to a conversation practice group too, but, well. Hope my speaking hasn't atrophied too much.


 are you much of a reader? it helped me a lot to read german translations of books i’ve already read in english. harry potter is a good one since they’re basically children’s books to start but become increasingly complex.


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## Mr. Ultracool (Jul 22, 2020)

I'm a native German speaker, but I also speak English fluently. Also, I had French in school for a while, but I'm pretty bad at it


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## sanderidge (Jul 22, 2020)

i only speak english! i don't feel like i'm anywhere near fluent in any other language.

i have a household understanding of korean (enough to understand what christmas presents my parents buying, or the fact that my dad is talking about company politics, but not enough to follow along with said politics or to talk intelligently on the subject myself; i cannot talk to my grandparents it's terrifying). i took french in high school (apparently my accent is good! i don't remember any french!). through a series of weird events i had latin from third to eighth grade so i have things like really basic grammar (case endings and some verb things) drilled pretty well into me and i can get along with basic translations if i have a dictionary. i'm learning welsh on duolingo because i'm gay, at a level where i can say things like mae'r ceffyl yn y ysbyty but not, like, have a Conversation about said horse in the hospital. also i don't remember the grammatical genders of anything so a lot of the mutations are beyond me. i have less japanese than korean but i can still fairly reliably get the basic gist of a song or spoken dialogue (i cannot read in any capacity). finally, i can say i am a watermelon in mandarin! that's it.


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## Murkrow (Jul 22, 2020)

sanderidge said:


> i'm learning welsh on duolingo because i'm gay


At least you can now talk about Owen and his parsnips


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## Sandstone-Shadow (Jul 23, 2020)

I’ve been practicing Spanish on Duolingo! I took it in high school so I have some base memory of the general structure/grammar. I’m attempting to play Let’s Go Eevee in Spanish too. With the words/grammar I know so far, I’m fairly confident reading and semi-confident writing, but listening is much harder and speaking is impossible haha. I get so self-conscious! There’s a group at work that does Spanish lessons at lunch, and I’m at the point now where I feel like I know enough basics to participate confidently :D So once that’s an option again...

I learned a bit of Italian for a trip to Italy several years ago, but I don’t remember very much of it and I can’t be certain I’m not accidentally thinking about Spanish since they’re so similar ha. 

There’s also like, half a dozen languages that I think would be super cool to learn and speak, but I’m starting with Spanish because 1) one at a time might work better for me and 2) Spanish is the most practical second language for me to learn right now and there’s been multiple opportunities for me to use it! But I couldn’t because I didn‘t know it. Yay for learning!


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## qenya (Jul 23, 2020)

kyeugh said:


> kokorico said:
> 
> 
> > Unfortunately I'm not strong in any language other than English, but I'm learning German in the hope of being able to move there for work after I graduate. Wherever possible I try to play video games or watch TV in German, for the immersion. (Unfortunately German translations of things are often... not great.) Before the pandemic I went to a conversation practice group too, but, well. Hope my speaking hasn't atrophied too much.
> ...


oh, yeah! someone else suggested that to me a couple months ago and I completely forgot about it until now. will definitely look into that, thank you!


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## haneko (Aug 15, 2020)

English is my first language and it's the only one I speak fluently. I can speak my ancestral language at an advanced-intermediate sort of level, though; my vocabulary is small and my accent's off, though my understanding and grammar are fine. 

I learnt French in school but I've managed to forget most of it. Same with Spanish.
I know a tiny bit of Japanese from watching too much anime but I wouldn't claim I can speak it to any extent.

If I was going to learn a new language I'd go for Japanese or German, probably.


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## I liek Squirtles (Aug 16, 2020)

I'm from Puerto Rico, so I speak Spanish as well. I know a little bit of French and even less German. If anyone needs help with Spanish homework, I'm always willing to help!


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## EthioBromide (Sep 1, 2020)

I can speak Amharic, which is Ethiopia's main Language, and a small amount Italian since my parent knew that too.


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